Mastering your time

An introduction to time management, including what time management is and why it is important.

With an understanding of what time management is, and why it is important, you can start to embed strategies that will work for you to help you better organise your activities and time to help you succeed.

Remember, it's not a "one size fits all" approach and, as much as some strategies may work for one person, some strategies may not work for you. It is helpful to experiment with different approaches and strategies to find what the best fit for your lifestyle is.

Tips and strategies you can implement to help you "manage your time" better.

Time management tips

Prioritise your tasks

Use this Eisenhower's Matrix template to help prioritise your tasks efficiently.

Weekly planner

Use this weekly planner template to organise all of your personal and professional activities, giving you a clear overview of all you have to manage.

Monthly planner

Use this template to organise your monthly activities. It can be especially useful for noting deadlines.

Other useful tips and strategies

There are a variety of useful time management tips but you will need to find the strategies that best work for you.

Time management tips

There are lots of time management tips that you can utilise to better focus your attention and organise you tasks. Find the one's that work best for you. If you find that none of the ones we have suggested are a good fit, the internet will provide you with a wealth of resources - just search for "Time management tips".

The Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique was created by an Italian who used a tomato shaped timer to help them work in chunks of time - which is how it got its name (Tomato in Italian is 'pomodoro').

To use this technique, find any timer you have access to (it doesn't need to be tomato shaped!). You might have an egg timer in the kitchen, or you could just use the built in timer on a mobile phone.

Set the timer for 20 minutes.
Work solidly on a task you have from the moment you set the timer until it rings.
Set the timer for 10 minutes.
Take a break. Do anything you want to do that isn't work for the duration of the 10 minutes.
Repeat for as many 'chunks' as needed.

Concentration apps

If you find you get easily distracted by your phone, you will find that you may have a built in wellbeing app that will allow you to block specific apps for a period of time. If you don't have a designated wellbeing app on your phone, you can download apps that will do the same thing. Examples include 'Forest' or 'Space' (but of course others are available! Search your phone's app store for all that they offer - just search for 'concentration app' or similar).

Find your 'Productivity Zone'

Some people will work better at different times of the day - whether that because they are more awake, or they know they will have less distractions from other people at certain times, etc. Spend some time to figure out when your productivity zone is - the time when you will get the most done without distraction!

Make a to do list the night before

Some people find that they get off to a better start in the day when they have a clear direction of what they need to achieve. One method you can try is to create a to-do list of all the things you'd like to achieve the next day. Do it last thing on an evening. THe following morning you'll be able to focus on getting things done.

If you need even more structure than that, you might follow this up by allocating the tasks on a daily planner or allocating them into time slots.

Stop multitasking

For a long time, people have said being able to multitask is a great thing to be able to do. In truth, focusing our time on multiple activities only hinders our productivity. Instead, if you've got a lot on, allocate your jobs to specific times - you might take it a step further by using a Eisenhower Matrix to decide what is important and urgent!